Jerry Robinson, who created the Joker, stands with the two framed covers, Superman #14 and Detective Comics #69, that will be offered for auction on ComicConnect.com. Photo: AP

Holy Ka-ching Batman!

The creator the Dark Knight’s psychopathic comic book scourge, the Joker, is reluctantly selling two of his prized, original comic book covers that he hoped would one day end up in the Smithsonian, in a bid to leave behind a healthy nest egg for his family.

Jerry Robinson, 88, one of the original writers and artists behind Batman and Superman will auction off his own “Double Guns” prototype of Detective Comics No. 69, the first appearance of the Joker and an iconic 1942 comic book cover drawn by former colleague Fred Ray, known as the Superman Patriotic Shield.

The image is acknowledged by comic book aficionados to have sealed the Man of Steel’s status as the champion of “Truth, Justice and the American Way.”

The Joker art is expected to fetch around $400,000; while the Superman art could snare more than $1 million when they go on sale through online auctioneer ComicConnect.com, from Nov. 10 through Dec. 1.

“I’ve hung onto to these things for almost 70 years now,” Robinson told The Post yesterday from his Upper West Side apartment.

“So obviously this was a very hard decision, they’re going to be very hard to part with — they were a big part of my youth, but I’m 88 now. I think it’s time to see that they get into the proper hands to be preserved. I’m hoping whomever buys them will donate them to the Library of Congress or the Smithsonian.

Selling the art is a purely a financial decision, he said.

“I have a family and would like to leave them more secure. I wish I was a millionaire who could afford to donate them [the art] to the Smithsonian or the Library of congress, but I’m not.”

Robinson says of the many incarnations of The Joker on screen, Caesar Romero’s silly depiction of the psychopathic killer for the 1960s “Batman” TV show was the closest physical representation of the character he had in mind when he first created the sinister clown.

“Even though Caesar wouldn’t shave his mustache for the part and they had to cover it up with makeup,” Robinson laughed.

In the days before the comic book became accepted as a legitimate American art form, the original artworks — drawn in black and white ink on thick drawing boards — had no real value. Most of the time they would be destroyed after the comic was published.

“We used to just tape them up on the wall,” Robinson said. “Nobody thought of the original art work as having any value. It wasn’t valued until it was published.

“I just had the sense that it should be saved,” said Robinson, a member of the original Batman team at DC Comics, who sat in a bullpen working alongside Superman’s other big-name creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, and Captain America illustrator Jack Kirby, at DC’s New York headquarters.

The Superman cover featuring the Patriotic Shield became the iconic comic book cover of World War II, said Robinson, as Superman would frequently battle Axis powers just like the GI’s that read the comics while overseas. “Americans needed heroes and Superman became our hero,” Robinson said. “Superman would fight the Nazis and Hitler. He became a symbol of America.”

The record price for a piece of original comic art, was attained this year. Someone paid $380,000 for a 1955 Weird Science cover by Frank Frazetta. The record for a comic book is $1.5 million, set last year, for a 1938 issue of a Superman Action Comics No. 1 issue.